The present invention relates to solar batteries.
In a step of forming electrodes of solar batteries, a technology is well-known in which the surface roughness of the electrodes is reduced by screen-printing electrically conductive paste onto the electrodes a plurality of cycles, so as to decrease the resistance of the electrodes (referred to as Patent Document 1).
[Patent Document 1]    Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 103,084/1999.
In the electrode-forming technique described above, an underlying idea is that, by printing a plurality of cycles, the cross-sectional area of the electrodes increases and the resistance decreases accordingly; however, on the other hand, the amount of material consumed for the printing increases, which has led to cost rise and wasting resources.
Moreover, because grid electrodes provided on the side of light receiving faces are formed for the purpose of only collecting electrons, the electrodes do not contribute to electric power generation at all; therefore, by reducing these portions, efficiency in the electric power generation can be contrarily improved; however, if it is intended to narrow the grid width, it will then lead the electrode resistance to increase. For example, in order to make the electrode resistance to be equivalent before and after narrowing the grid width, when the width is halved, the thickness needs to be doubled. Accordingly, a problem has occurred in that consumption of the electrode material further increases.
An objective of the present invention, which is made to solve a problem as described above, is to obtain electrodes in which the consumption of row material is reduced while maintaining sufficient electrode performance.